Mr. Collins is a conceited, pompous, narrow-minded, silly man; you know he is, as well as I do; and you must feel, as well as I do, that the woman who married him cannot have a proper way of thinking.

Real solemn history, I cannot be interested in.... The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars and pestilences in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all.

I can safely say, that the happiest part of my life has been spent on board a ship.

My Emma, does not every thing serve to prove more and more the beauty of truth and sincerity in all our dealings with each other?

Never could I expect to be so truly beloved and important; so always first and always right in any man's eyes as I am in my father's.

I have never yet known what it was to separate esteem from love

You think me foolish to call instruction a torment, but if you had been as much used as myself to hear poor little children first learning their letters and then learning to spell, if you had ever seen how stupid they can be for a whole morning together, and how tired my poor mother is at the end of it, as I am in the habit of seeing almost every day of my life at home, you would allow that to torment and to instruct might sometimes be used as synonymous words.